


autonomy, community, home

by evapples, muusings



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Bullying, Dysphoria, Illustrated, Other, Transphobia, Underage Drinking, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 11:25:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evapples/pseuds/evapples, https://archiveofourown.org/users/muusings/pseuds/muusings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>when karkat vantas enters his life, it isn’t truly spectacular. </em>(or, the formative years in which dave strider finds an identity, a name, and the importance of shared outrage.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	autonomy, community, home

“what are you _wearing?”_

school playground, 10:47, recess. dave’s six years old and it’s halloween and _what he’s wearing_ is a full, deliriously ironic james dean get up. he even has a damn candy cigarette, only he’s paired the outfit with a flashy pair of earrings and flouncy skirt.

he mimes flicking the candy cig out, looks the kid up and down, and huffs out an unimpressed laugh. the other guy’s supposed to be some sort of athlete, probably, shoulder pads and SANCHEZ in big, white letters on what dave is guessing is a hockey jersey.

“clothes, asshole. what are you wearing?”

sanchez hockey jersey’s eyes go wide at the soft swear, eyebrows flying off his tall forehead, childish gasp catching in messy teeth. dave gets told on for cussing but he isn’t surprised about it, and when the first grade writing-storytime-math teacher carts him away to the principal’s, he shrugs out of her grasp and walks himself because he doesn’t like people touching him.

she sits him on a hard, ugly blue chair next to some snot-nosed girl in pigtails, and the girl says, _what are you supposed to be?_ and he says, _james dean as marilyn monroe,_ and she says, _why don’t you just be marilyn? she’s a girl,_ and he says, _i wanna be james dean._

she gives him a funny look like she doesn’t know what he’s on about and turns away from him in her seat.

dave picks dirt off his boots until bro comes to laugh at administration.

(his name isn’t dave yet. he doesn’t become dave for a few years, but these things happen.)

on the first day of junior high, he meets a girl name jade with tangled hair like brillo and a ten thousand kilowatt smile who tells him about constellations before he actually asks. she’s cool but not really and she’s taller than him and when she asks him what his name is he tells her.

she says, “that’s not what you want, though, is it?”

and he stops and thinks about it, momentarily shaken by this girl who managed to split him open. he suddenly feels exposed, exposed in a weird way by this weird girl he doesn’t even know, and she stays quiet but confident in the wake of her analysis.

“nah, guess not."

and she nods with a smile, small but sure, and drops the topic in favor of a squirmy sorta bug she saw on the bus ride over.

he pretends not to be interested.

 

\---

  
bro buys him a copy of seventeen with his gameinformer, beauty tips, celeb gossip and boytalk all hilariously, mundanely normal for a “girl” his age, and he leafs through it halfheartedly. it talks about pores and hair and gives him precise, matter-of-fact instructions about how to handle both and why pores and hair care are so crucial to getting a boyfriend. he’s dimly aware of the fact because he reads this mag, he’s supposed to want a boyfriend, and when he glances over glossies of chiseled teen heartthrobs, he’s more clearly aware that that’s the sort of boyfriend he’s supposed to want.

most of them are pretty hot.

he goes back to gameinformer.

\---

there’s an article nestled in about the _real life story_ of a girl’s ex-boyfriend, how he was _really a GIRL!_ \---complete with exclamation mark and caps---and dave feels his whole chest fill with fire ants. his head buzzes and he’s suddenly sure his lungs are taking in water, like he’s all at once burning and drowning in it and he may never, never breathe right again but his skin is under botched acupuncture and he shuts his eyes real tight.

his hands shake when he turns the page, words like he-she and liar and fake illuminated in small, ugly font, and he writes bro a note: _seventeen sucks try o,_ the end tacked on for the air of ease, and bro writes, _sure thing, sis._

he doesn’t sleep after that.

  
\---

he finds himself over months, over years, but he finds ‘dave’ somewhere in the summer before high school starts. more specifically, though, rose finds it for him some late, shitty night over pesterchum after a run in with her mother’s liquor cabinet. she meant to call him dear.

it was the only good thing their mother’s vodka ever gave him.

(he starts feeling like a liar, but it’s not for the reason seventeen thinks.)

\---

when he’s fifteen he writes a note to bro in tilted red ink on an off-brand yellow post it, deliberately half-assed, practiced and rewritten and rewritten over. nineteen revisions get him a faux-casual _can you call me dave,_ and three days later he finds a _you got it, lil’ man_ stuck to a katana in the fridge.

he doesn’t even care that bro swapped out the sandwich meats again.

\---

(what actually happens is that he finds _you got it, lil’ man_ in black, black bic on post it, holds it in his too-small, too-scarred hands, and stares at it in disbelief. his shoulders shake and his laugh is watery and he waits exactly the amount of time it takes to flash step back to his room before becoming a part of his bed sheets in a way only the truly relieved can.

and the weight on him eases as he lets himself cry.)

\---

when karkat vantas enters his life, it isn’t truly spectacular. there are no fireworks, no accidental brushes in hallways, no convenient partner project to pull them together. they have the same english class, that’s it, and truth be told karkat sits three chairs away for weeks before dave actually notices zem.

when he finally does, it’s mostly because it’s sort of hard not to.

actually, okay, it’s sort of _impossible_ not to---the kid’s got one hand pounding on a desk, the other clutching a crinkled, long-forgotten essay on _the propaganda of cis-ciety and heteronormative culture_ , which seems less an essay and more an outline of things ze hates. ze hates a lot of things.

he’s entirely enraptured, and karkat---karkat’s half-shouting about the expectations of men and the forced perfection/subordination of women, about how fucking bullshit all of it is, and zir face is a little splotchy but ze’s entirely sincere in zir anger and disgust and the teacher stopped reprimanding zir language some three minutes ago.

the class is caught between snickering and stunned silence and dave would be thinking that mrs. leman looks regretful of her decision to have them read their essays to the class but he’s entirely caught up in karkat’s nose as it wrinkles, in zir sneer, in zir exasperation. ze talks about fashion magazines and dave inches forward, so subtle he doesn’t even realize, shifting in increments as his world moves from under him.

he’s never heard anyone speak like this, speak _about_ this---even rose kept it practically clinical, when dave was thirteen and fucked up about that article, but when karkat speaks, it’s real. it’s personal and visceral and _real_ and dave feels more understood than he had since jade dissected him in the sixth grade. only this time, he isn’t vulnerable. he isn’t scared.

he’s home.

 

  
karkat’s mouth is still open as the fifth period bell rings and dave snaps out of quiet reverie. juniors push past him, most of them probably headed toward lunch like he is, but dave rises slowly on fawn legs and gathers his things.

he’s been going through possibilities in his head, openers he could try, maybe, compliments he could give that would sound sincere but not _too_ sincere, and his brain is going 500 miles an hour but some of it sounds halfway decent.

“that was, uh. that was pretty good.”

dave shuts his eyes in frustration behind expensive shades, but karkat just brushes past and huffs, “yeah, whatever.”

he stands behind zem in confusion before his brain starts back up again.

“hey, no, wait up!” he calls. “fuck, dude. you really know how to take a compliment, huh?”

“leave me alone, shithole.” ze yanks zir pack further on zir shoulder, hunched with zir back toward him.

“what? no, i---“

ze stops abruptly. “what? you _what?”_ ze turns to face him, and dave loses his breath and nerve in the inches between them.

“you want to congratulate me on my ability to make up words? you want to laugh in my face? you want to tell me i’m over- _fucking_ -sensitive? thanks but no thanks, you festering sack of elephant shit. get out of my face and do some fucking research.”

he tries to apologize, but ze’s already storming away.

\---

dave licks his wounds in the cafeteria while jade blathers about comets, humming and saying “yeah, yeah, yeah” in just enough places. her voice patters in the background of his self-criticism, him sitting in silence picking their interaction apart. he doesn’t know karkat, doesn’t know zem at all, but some weird little part of him feels like that doesn’t matter.

because, clearly, karkat knows _him_. karkat knows harassment, fear, hatred. karkat knows what it feels like to be spoken over and undermined, belittled, written off and made a punch line. to be casually swept under a rug society still claims doesn’t exist. to have society claim you don’t exist.

karkat gets that, and ze wasn’t going to sit on zir damn hands about it. dave’s pulse races.

a few tables over, three guys in his english class do a grotesque reenactment of zir speech while their friends laugh, mocking language they don’t understand with portmanteaus and full mouths. one of them suggests zir problem with the notion of passing is simply resentment at the fact that ze couldn’t.

but what he says is, “the he-she’s just pissed real girls can see its boner through its dress.”

dave feels something deep down in him snap, and instead of curling up like he wants to, or shutting down like he always has, he stands.

he mutters “brb” and rises from the shitty plastic seat, 5’3 and menacing, and he clenches intent in his bony fist.

they take their time noticing him, bellowing shit-stained laughter like drunk chimps, but dave lets them work up to it.

“sup, guys. somethin’ funny?” he’s leaning on their table like he owns it, taking up space like all men are taught to. “someone tell me what we’re laughin’ at, here.”

a big dude with skin like undercooked fish looks at him screwy a sec, like he’s trying to figure out why he’s there or whether he’s even worth his time, but he grunts and says, “you’ve got leman fourth, right?”

he nods. fish cutlet laughs.

“you catch that tranny’s rant today, though? fuckin’ hilarious, like—”

the crack of fishie’s nose breaking covers whatever was left there, and dave wonders vaguely if he even wants the dude’s blood touching him, but his friends are starting out their chairs and someone’s saying, _shit, dude, what the fuck?_ and he’s started something bigger than him, now.

least he could do is finish, right?

somewhere he hears someone say _what the fuck was that for?_ and dave smiles and says, “it wasn’t his fuckin’ word.”

\---

he gets suspended a week for fighting, but when bro picks him up, he asks, “how many guys?” and dave says, “three at first, i dunno. maybe five or six,” and bro nods.

(he walks out to the kitchen to scavenge for apple juice at one in the morning and finds a barely-opened box of donuts.

it’s a pretty decent ‘i’m proud of you,’ all things considered.)

\---

english his first day back is basically normal, though he keeps getting side-eyed from the kids in his class. he’s heard different versions of the story since homeroom, but he doesn’t pay them attention. he doesn’t expect any of them to be right.

fishie sits a few seats away and one row back, and his face is bloated on the left side, still, his nose a strange, disjointed ripple, his eyes filled with hate. dave tries not to laugh.

karkat, though---karkat’s hunched into zir notebook as usual, above this in the way ze always has been, but ze keeps stealing glances at dave like ze can’t spend too much time looking away, like the bruises on dave’s face might shift or fade by the time ze looks back up. and dave feels like he’s being watched, has that unshakable sensation of eyes on him, but he only catches karkat looking ten minutes from the end of the period.

ze freezes.

karkat looks sort of petrified at the prospect of being caught, eyes blown wide, but dave simply smiles at zem. it’s uneven and unpracticed, maybe too fast, maybe too clumsy, but dave fucking means it.

he lifts his shades to show off an impressive black eye, scattered scratches and near gashes from when his old pair broke against his skin. ze nods back at him and he winks, quicker even than the smile, and then puts his shades back and looks toward the front.

karkat ducks back into the sleeves of zir sweater, back into zir notebook, cheeks dusted pink.

it’s a start.

\---

  
dave’s going to last period, late as usual, when he sees karkat with some tall white dude he vaguely remembers from the fight. he can’t hear what they’re saying, not from where he is, but he can see how the other dude’s eying karkat, how zir hands twitch at zir sides and zir posture strays toward defensive.

dave slows down and tenses up, and when tall guy pushes at karkat’s shoulder, he calls out, “hey!”

he looks up and dave makes his way over, saying, “you got another joke?”

“don’t worry, man. i was just telling your boyfriend how nice her skirt is.”

dave turns to karkat and says, “any of those words right?” and ze says, “what do you think i was saying here, shitstain?”

his mouth twitches. “you heard the kid. hey, but vantas---it’s vantas, right?---vantas here’s pretty understanding, don’t worry. i’m sure they’ll forgive you if you say sorry.”

karkat grumbles cusses beside him, but fight guy scoffs and says, “sorry, tranny.”

which was the wrong answer.

ze lunges forward, gets the first punch in seconds, has zir left hand on his neck as ze holds him against the locker, and dave backs out of zir space.

some small part deep down in him wants to break this up, wants to pull karkat away by the collar of zir too-big sweater and make sure that boy doesn’t get any hits in, but he knows what karkat’s feeling with each blow and he knows this is therapeutic.

he hangs back a beat before saying, “yo, rocky. you wanna ditch?”

karkat kicks tall guy’s shin with finality and says, “you know what? yeah. who the fuck cares, anyway.”

ze readjusts zir skirt and he slides down the locker wall behind zem.

\---

“what? no, dude, are you kidding? back to the future was a classic---”

“back to the future was the most vapid, inane child bullshit i’ve ever wasted one hundred and sixteen minutes of my life forced to suffer through. i could’ve shat the bed and deciphered a more coherent plot through the pattern of my own defecation on my fucking bed sheets, that’s how bad back to the fucking future was.”

“oh, my god,” he wheezes, “i can’t believe---”

_“moreover,”_ karkat continues over him, “marty mcfly was a fucking dipshit. everyone knows you don’t get mess with time travel, and what does this brain scientist decide? ‘oh, hahaha, i’m going to go back before i was born and strike up a damn conversation with my parents! yeah, what a brilliant idea, kudos, such a revolutionary mind i have! no-one has ever, in the history of science fiction, _ever_ conceived such a marvel plan of action as _talking to their own fucking parents_ , will someone give me my fields medal?’ christ—"

karkat keeps shitting on his favorite movie for, like, seven minutes, but dave laughs harder than he has in ages, alternating between reveling in karkat’s colorful monologue and zoning out to look at zir mouth move, zir hands move, zir dark, dark hair catch natural sunlight.

“seriously, how do you like this colossal failure of cinema?” ze finishes with a desperate gesture.

dave shrugs.

“oh, my god. were you even listening? i’m not going over that again.” ze looks like ze might, but dave just bumps zir shoulder with his own.

“there’s a burger joint up west. you in?”

ze huffs, pseudo-put upon, but dave can see zir mouth twitch up.

“yeah, whatever.”

\---

“c’mon, though, seriously. you don’t have to lie, here, vantas---“

“dave, time travel isn’t even possible. don’t be an idiot.”

he shrugs and downs the rest of the glass. “maybe. be pretty cool, though.”

karkat opens zir mouth and pauses.

“yeah… yeah, i guess it would be.”

ze bites back into zir double cheese.

\---

(karkat tells him zir pronouns when he asks, and he sees the relief in zir eyes, zir shoulders.

dave’s chest hurts at the hint of surprise the question’s met with.)

\---

ze comes to the apartment the first time a few weeks later, some shitty, stormy thursday afternoon, to do english work.

or, no. ze comes some shitty, stormy thursday afternoon the day before they’re supposed to have a report ready on _1984_ because dave hasn’t started reading it. ze insults him explicitly and creatively, sighs louder than ze needs to, and offers help dave knows he isn’t supposed to deny.

mostly, though, he’s just happy to have zem around.

(karkat wears trenches in dave’s floor as ze discusses big brother and thought police and the enforcement of ideals, and dave thinks he’s never seen something as beautiful or inspiring as karkat vantas in passionate outrage or a pair of rain-soaked sweats.

he wonders if ze’s okay with gendered compliments, but he’s not about to interrupt.)

\---

“are you sure this works? like, can i even pull this off.” dave fingers the hem of the borrowed skirt anxiously, minutely. he hadn’t worn one in---shit, in years, had been too scared to, but.

fuck being scared.

“are you kidding me, strider?” ze rolls zir eyes. “you’re going to stop being a cocky piece of shit now, seriously?” but he catches how zir eyes linger a little, how ze worries zir lip as ze evaluates the fit.

“ouch, karkat. i’m wounded. and after all we’ve been through. i wasted my golden years on you, you know that? did our vows mean nothing? what are we gonna tell the kids?”

“i will never understand why you are the way you are,” ze deadpans.

“you love it. it’s cool, like, i get it. embrace it, karkat. feel the love.”

“you disgust me.”

dave laughs while karkat petulantly maintains a straight face, but he sees zem grin a little behind his own reflection. he doesn’t comment.

he’s too busy admiring himself in zir clothes.

\---

it becomes this unspoken agreement, the clothes thing. when dave first mentions how sometimes he misses the feel of skirts, the ability to wear them freely in public without people making threats or shallow assumptions, they’re deep in a game of call of duty. they’ve been discussing binarism and cisnormative propaganda and the politics of presentation lazily for more than an hour.

it’s been two months since jolene’s burgers, but karkat’s never stayed the night before now, and when dave says “i sorta miss dresses sometimes, y’know?” he doesn’t expect karkat to say, “you can try on my skirt, if you want.”

but ze does.

it’s bashful and quiet, but the offer’s there, and dave says, “yeah, okay,” and it _fits._

dave lounges around in zir skirt while they play cod, then some ironic (terrible) fighter game, then some even worse one with orange soda and a presidential assassination attempt and subzero plot that has karkat even meaner than back to the future did.

they fall asleep next to each other at five am on the hard, hard floor, karkat in a borrowed pair of shorts and dave in karkat’s skirt.

that was the first time.

it quickly becomes a habit neither of them directly confront, and every time karkat leaves in dave’s hoodie, in his shirt, in his socks, he plays like he didn’t notice the accident.

he likes the idea of zem in his clothes.

  
\---

dave doesn’t remember when karkat started sitting with jade and him. he barely remembers the time before, though, either, before jade and karkat argued over movies and books and assignments and literally everything else they possibly could while dave agreed with jade for the fun of riling zem up.

he watches them bicker and can’t believe there was a time he didn’t have this.

  
\---

(rose thinks he’s lovesick.

dave thinks she’s an uninformed romantic.)

  
\---

“what? holy shit, are you fucking kidding me? that was a clear shot, how the fuck did you miss that? i’m sorry, christ, it must be so hard to play when you _don’t have fucking eyes.”_

“yeah, and i’m sorry about fucking up that jump because ‘x stopped working,’ too, what a shit excuse. oh, wait---“

“i swear to god x stopped working, how fucking dense are you, _x stopped working---"_

  
“whatever helps you through the night, vantas.” he pauses the game and rolls lazily on his side to face zem.

“pizza?”

ze groans. _“why do i put up with you.”_

“stuffed crust? good call.”

ze laughs and tackles him and they wrestle thoughtlessly, and maybe dave’s faster, maybe he’s better trained, but karkat’s nothing if not a fighter.

a couple minutes of struggle finds zem sitting on his hips, wrists pinned above his head. he marvels at the illusion of tightness in his jeans, suddenly reminded of late night prayers, of dreamed eternities beneath zem.

karkat chuckles breathlessly against his neck and rolls off, and they settle beside each other.

“you’re really beautiful,” he blurts. “is that---are you---is that okay, or----“

“dave.”

“i mean, i know that’s, whatever, that’s gendered and you’re---not, i don’t want to use a word that, like. if someone called me beautiful, i’d be pretty pissed, but people use that to make fun of dudes, like---fuckin’ misogyny, but if you called me beautiful, well. i’d be _surprised,_ because you don’t----“

_“dave.”_

“yeah?”

“i’m going to kiss you, okay? is that alright?”

he blinks.

“yeah, that’s. please do that.”

ze rolls zir eyes fondly and cups his cheek and then ze’s kissing him. zir fingers pull at the collar of his shirt and they’re still lying on the damn floor and it isn’t perfect but it sort of is and dave swears he can taste infinity on zir mouth when ze sucks his bottom lip. he steadies a hand on the small of zir back out of reflex and ze shifts slightly above him. he thinks of years of sticking out and how he fits right in the space beneath zem, of a childhood of scars and uneducated forays with ace bandages and every slur he’s ever come across and he kisses karkat vantas until he can’t remember his own damn name.

and he’s home again.

(he doesn’t want to be james dean. he doesn’t want anything but to be right here.)

**Author's Note:**

> lovely middle illustration by evapples!! special thanks to j fr endless cheerleeding and enthusiasm, ilu


End file.
